2011 Chevrolet Volt Driven in Range-Extending Mode

Simulated normal: How can something so unconventional feel so familiar?

Like an expectant parent, GM can’t help showing off the ultrasounds of its still-gestating 2011 Chevrolet Volt. “Look, look!” the company seems to be exclaiming. “It has a pretty battery and the most adorable internal-combustion engine ever! Isn’t it the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?!” But once past the obligatory oohing and aahing, the question remains whether the newborn Volt will be a really sweet car or a colicky, whining, crying brat.

Earlier this year in April GM let us take a few laps around its proving ground in a Volt prototype (wearing Chevy Cruze sheetmetal) running strictly on its batteries. This time it allowed C/D some quick laps around the parking lot at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in a better-finished Volt running in both purely battery-fed and internally combusted modes. (How the Volt might perform at, say, Lambeau Field in Green Bay or around Fenway Park in Boston is open to speculation.)

For the recently thawed australopiths out there, here’s a quick Volt recap. The Volt is GM’s all-in, new-technology green-car bet. It’s a hybrid in that it has an electric motor, a battery pack, and a conventional internal-combustion engine aboard. However, unlike parallel hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, the Volt is a “series” or “inline” hybrid with no mechanical connection between the 1.4-liter gasoline-fueled powerplant and the drive wheels. Instead, the 100-hp (estimated) 16-valve DOHC four-cylinder engine kicks in to turn a generator only when the battery pack has run down to about 30 percent of its capacity. The power from that generator keeps the batteries in the sweet spot of their charge profile to effectively extend the Volt’s range, says GM, by about 300 miles beyond the batteries’ 40-ish-mile limitation. The Volt is always propelled by its 149-hp electric motor; it’s only the source of the juice that varies.

And unlike previous hybrids, the five-door Volt hatchback is a plug-in. Its lithium-ion batteries can be fully charged through a port on the left front fender using household current and a heavy-duty extension cord stored under the rear cargo floor.

Sounds Fancy, but It Mostly Isn’t

Most of the Volt’s hardware (with the notable exception of the advanced batteries) is pretty standard stuff. The electric motor is just another electric motor, the internal-combustion engine is ordinary, and the Volt’s basic structure is the same front-drive GM Global Small Car Platform—a.k.a. Delta—that underpins the upcoming Chevy Cruze replacement for the Cobalt. Even most of the computers strewn about to make it all work are off-the-shelf components. It’s the software that has to be super-trick for the Volt to be taken seriously as a car.

“The last thing finished is always the wiring,” explains Volt chief engineer Andrew Farah, “and right behind that is the software.”

Not to be too Star Trek–y here, but the Volt is practically a holodeck on wheels. The throttle is by wire, the regenerative brakes are by wire, and the oversize shifter in the center console is just a fancy electric switch. The steering wheel is actually connected to the front wheels, but its effort is managed by an electric power-assist system. The algorithms embedded in the Volt’s software mediate virtually all the sensations transmitted by the car to the driver. That’s not hydraulic pressure you feel when you step on the brakes but rather the feel one of the computers has determined you’d find satisfying. This is as close as any manufacturer has come to throwing four wheels on a driving simulator and selling it to the public.

However, on the Dodger Stadium loop, the most remarkable thing about how the Volt drives is how unremarkably it drives. Press the start button, and the LED screen behind the steering wheel glows into virtual instrumentation, and that’s about the only clue that the car is ready to be driven. There’s some heft to how the shifter moves from park to drive, and that’s pleasing—even though that heft is an affectation.

Running on the batteries, the Volt has the immediate low-end torque that Cadillac buyers used to rely on a 500-cubic-inch V-8 to provide. On the short Dodger course, it was impossible to assess how long the Volt’s thrust would last, but it’s the sort of heave that should make the car a joy to drive in the cut and thrust of an urban driving environment. The Volt is quiet, too, with some thrum from the low-rolling-resistance P215/55-17 Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max tires being the most obvious noise.

A Sport Mode?

With 400 pounds of batteries running low along its center spine, the Volt was stable going through the course’s sharp corners. Of course, there’s plenty of built-in understeer because, well, this is still a GM front-driver. But there is something that feelslike steering feel, and it’s easy to place the Volt precisely on the course.

Then chief engineer Farah reaches across from the passenger seat and hits a button beneath the center stack’s touch screen and puts the drivetrain into sport mode. Suddenly, the Volt feels significantly quicker and more eager. Surely, the batteries are being drained more rapidly, but it’s hard to imagine any C/D reader ever turning sport mode off.

“Watch the little battery,” Farah says, directing our eyes to the instrumentation. A moment later the battery icon turns into a spark plug, and the four-cylinder engine begins whirring. At first startup the engine runs long enough to heat up the catalytic converters, so it doesn’t turn itself off at stops. And when the engine is running, it’s always under load charging the batteries; it never idles. So the engine runs at a minimum of about 1000 rpm; we must guess, because there’s no tachometer. “Why have a tach?” asks Farah. “The driver can’t change the engine speed.”

Of course, the essentially flat Dodger course presented no real challenge for the Volt’s internal-combustion engine. But performance didn’t seem to drop off at all. Slamming down the accelerator pedal does result in the engine speed increasing as the electric motor demands more power to respond to the spur, but it’s not quite a directly linear relationship between throttle position and engine speed.

Within the context of this limited exposure, the Volt is an impressive piece of technology. Of course, that technology must be impressive if the four-passenger, not-very-big Volt is going to attract buyers at its expected price of $40,000 (before a $7500 incentive payment from the U.S. government). But would the tech be more impressive if the Volt didn’t seem so, well, normal? Even if it is just a simulated normal?

According to Farah, the Volt prototype we drove was about 65 percent of the way through its development—early adolescence for a new car. Even at this awkward stage, it’s apparent that the Volt isn’t a brat or a whiner. But when GM lets us loose with one outside of a parking lot, we’re going to try to make it cry.